Trivia

As an incentive Roberta Tovey (who was 11 at the time the film was produced) was paid a shilling (5p) by director Gordon Flemyng every time she did a scene in one take. She made so much money, Flemyng didn't offer her the same deal for the sequel. For the modern day comparison, a shilling from 1965 had the buying power of £1 now, or about $1.30.

To stir up publicity for the film, Tuesday 25 May 1965 saw a squad of Daleks descend on the Cannes Film Festival. Amongst the startled attendees to encounter them was John Lennon.

William Hartnell, who played the Doctor in the television series, was reportedly very disappointed to be replaced by Peter Cushing for the film. Peter Cushing was cast because he was better known to US (and international) audiences.

Contrary to popular belief, it was not inconsistent for The Doctor to be shown as a human scientist named Dr. Who. At that time, in the TV series, the lead character had been explicitly named as human (in 1965's "The Sensorites"), implied as inventor of the TARDIS (in 1965's "The Chase") and would soon be identified as Doctor Who. (in 1966's "The War Machines", "The Highlanders" and "The Underwater Menace"). The later revelations that he was an alien time-traveler, specifically a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, had not yet been devised. (And those later revelations have since themselves been contradicted.)

Gordon Flemyng did not originally realise that the Daleks' dome lights only flash in synchronisation with their speech, and consequently had them randomly pulse to make their scenes more visually interesting. This caused problems for Milton Subotsky when the film was assembled in post-production: editing the footage meant that he had to severely rewrite some dialogue to fit the flashes. This resulted in unavoidably staccato delivery for the creatures.